JOAN BAEZ BARRED FROM SINGING AT WALTER REED

TERESA WILTZ, WASHINGTON POST - When rocker John Mellencamp performed
for the recovering soldiers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center on Friday
night, a couple of things were missing. He squelched his typically
blistering rhetoric against the war in Iraq. Also MIA, as it turned out,
was folkie and antiwar activist Joan Baez, who says she was disinvited
from the event by Army officials. In a letter in The Washington Post,
Baez says Mellencamp had wanted her to perform with him and that she had
accepted his invitation. . . "In the end, four days before the concert,
I was not 'approved' by the Army to take part. Strange irony." Reached
by telephone yesterday at her home in Menlo Park, Calif., Baez, 66, said
she wasn't told why she was given the boot, but speculated, "There might
have been one, there might have been 50 [soldiers] that thought I was a
traitor.". . . After the concert, Baez said, Mellencamp left her a
message to say, "I hope you're not mad at me." Her response: " 'Of
course not. It's an honor to be turned down by the Army.' . . . But I
would have been happier getting in . . . I thought times had changed
enough."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/01/
AR2007050101999.html?nav=rss_print/style


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